A Little Education
by Colubrina
Summary: Tom Riddle and Hermione Granger are graduate students in the same psychology program. When they get caught in a blizzard on the way to a conference, the only hotel has but one room left. And it only has one bed. Whatever will happen? Non-magical AU. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

They were grad students when they met, Tom and Hermione. She had to admit he was brilliant. Of course, everyone had to admit that. Acknowledging the obvious didn't make her special and denying it would have made her seem petty. Along with smart, though, he was also rude, horrible, cruel, and even from a distance, she wasn't sure he followed any of the ethical guidelines required for human psych experiments. Also, there was the problem of him being so fucking gorgeous it annoyed her to look at him. Bad people shouldn't look like the way he did, with black wavy hair and piercing blue eyes. They should have red pupils, or grey skin or anything to let you know at a glance they were monsters.

He didn't.

Worse, they were in the same department. And the department was cheap. So, when they both were accepted to present at the same conference, the department chair decided it was super brilliant to have them drive together. To Minnesota. In the winter.

It was the first time she ever spent any significant amount of time with him.

"You aren't expecting us to share rooms, are you?" Tom asked with that upper-class British accent that was just a little too perfect. She hated the disgust in his voice. I don't want to share a room with you either, you little prick, she thought.

The department chair probably would have liked it if they'd wanted to share rooms, but he knew he couldn't ask opposite sex colleagues to do that, so he was quick to tell them that of course not, don't be ridiculous.

"Good to know," Tom said. His eyes glittered and that accent grated, and Hermione wanted to tell him she knew he wasn't to the manor born. She'd snitched his file from the secretary one day and looked through it, and her chief rival came up from nothing. An actual orphanage. She hadn't known people even still lived in orphanages. He had to have taught himself those perfect vowels, and they were as fake as everything else about him. He was a smooth, perfect sheen of brilliant prodigy and she knew that under all of that he was as viciously ambitious as she was.

Maybe more so.

Which made him interesting.

It didn't mean she wanted to share a car with him for days on end, but she threw her bags and her work and her smiles into the back seat, clicked her belt into place and told him to drive. They didn't talk for the first three hours. When the snow began to fall, one slow, fat flake after another, he pressed down on the gas, and she pulled out her phone to check the weather.

"Supposed to get worse," she said.

"We'll beat it," was his only response.

They didn't. The flakes got faster, then smaller, and went from pretty to dangerous to so thick she couldn't see more than foot in front of the car. The whole world became a swirling, white vortex. Tom went faster still, and Hermione opened her mouth to tell him to stop, and he did.

Suddenly.

Because he ran into the guard rail.

And the car wouldn't go again.

And her phone had no service.

"I saw a hotel about a mile back," he said shortly. "We'll call for a tow from there."

She had on dress flats. They were the kind of shoes a serious graduate student wore to give a serious talk about how the perception of luck changed outcomes in carefully regulated tests of lacrosse players, some of whom were told the sugar pill they had been given had performance enhancing properties. They were good shoes. Not too expensive. Comfortable. Wholly unsuitable for walking a mile in a blizzard.

Tom Riddle had boots.

Ten steps into their walk back to the hotel she hated him. He looked at her feet, groaned, and picked her up and carried her. "You'll get frostbite," he said. "Which would look bad on my record."

Within a quarter of a mile, Hermione was shivering and miserable and couldn't even bring herself to waste energy on hate. By the time they got to the hotel, she didn't even care the clerk told them no one would be around to deal with their car for at least two days or that there was only one room left. With one double bed.

Tom put a credit card down on the counter and said, "We'll take it."


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione was always a little fuzzy about what happened after that. Her feet were cold, and she was shivering, and Tom Riddle was hauling her by the arm over worn carpet with the most appalling pattern of roses she'd ever seen. When the briars started to move and reach for her, and she started to shake uncontrollably, she was able to say, in the calmest voice, she could manage, "I think I have developed a fever," before she had to use the wall to keep from falling over.

"Don't be ridiculous," Tom said. "People don't get sick from being cold, Granger. They get sick from viruses."

"Or bacteria," she got out before he swiped the key card over the access panel of their door and, like magic, it opened. She stumbled forward, and the bed caught her. The room began to move, and some abstract part of her mind was fascinated to discover that when he swore, Tom Riddle reverted to some sort of inner-city cadence, accent and all.

"I think I have Tylenol in my purse," she said. "Do you think you could find it for me?"

The look he gave her was hateful. How dare she inconvenience him with human frailty, that look said. Bad enough he had to carry her because of her impractical shoes, but this was asking too much. Nevertheless, he dumped her purse out and began to sort through her things. She had tampons, and her wallet, and old subway tokens for a city she'd probably never return to. He shoved aside the phone that still has no signal, the pocket history of Minnesota book she'd grabbed because you didn't want to be some new place and not know anything about it, and all the other bits of assorted debris that fell to the bottom of every woman's bag.

No Tylenol.

"You are utterly useless," he said. He stalked over to the door and slammed it on his way out before she could ask what he was doing.

Probably on his way to get drunk in the tiny restaurant she'd seen.

She managed to get her wet shoes off, and her incredibly soaked pants, and the coat that hadn't been nearly warm enough. She left them all in a pile by the bed and crawled beneath the blankets as another bout of shaking overtook her. Tom Riddle could sleep on the floor or something.

Everything was hazy, and she was shivering and lying there when the door opened. Tom raked his eyes over the mound in the bed that was her then, without a word, went to the room's tiny bath. She heard the water run. She wasn't sure what she expected, but it wasn't a hand shoving a glass and two small white pills at her.

She gaped at them.

"Try to keep up," he said. "There's a vending machine. What your idiocy failed to provide, the hotel has."

She swallowed the pills.

"Get the fever down, Granger," he said as he kicked off his shoes. "Bad enough I have to share a bed with you. If you're still shaking, I'll make you sleep on the floor."

He sat down on the bed and leaned against the headboard without so much as a by-your-leave. He grabbed the TV remote and started to click through channels. She supposed she should be grateful he didn't seem to be interested in the sports recap shows because he didn't deign to ask her what she might like to watch. He just clicked from one unsuitable show to the next, finally stopping on a public access channel where a man was opining in sonorous tones about local government.

"You have to be kidding," she said.

"Understanding politics at the grassroots level is the key to power," he said. He leaned forward to watch more intently, and the droning voice did what the fever alone couldn't. It pushed her down into something like sleep.

Her last somewhat coherent thought was that Tom Riddle smelled good.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione woke up sometime early in the morning. It was still dark out, but the green glow of the cheap digital alarm clock let her see enough to cross the room to the window without tripping. She pulled back the curtain. She didn't even know why she was surprised at what she saw. This whole trip had been a disaster. Stuck with Riddle. A crashed car. A snowstorm. Fever. Of course, the snow was still falling. Of course, there was no sign any plow even tried to get through the parking lot. She supposed she should be grateful the power was still on.

When she turned back around Tom Riddle had propped himself up on one elbow and was watching her. How silently he woke and moved gave her the creeps, and the green light hitting the side of his face made him look like something out of a horror film. "I left clothes from the gift shop in the bathroom for you," he said.

She was about to force out a thank you when he added, "What you had on has to be soaked with sweat, and I can do without the reek of your sick," and she decided that gratitude wasn't necessary.

She locked the bathroom door. The water was hot and running, thank god, and there was soap and shampoo. The shower was heavenly. She didn't want to ever get out.

She decided to forgo the hair dryer – with her curls, it would just leave her looking like a deranged poodle – and instead, towel dried her hair and squinted into the fogged up mirror at herself. Even with streaks of water left after she swiped her hand across its surface, the mirror couldn't hide she looked a fright. Bags sat under her eyes. Her skin looked ghastly. At least she was clean, or mostly clean. She needed a toothbrush, but the hotel offered up things like a cloth to shine your shoes, not dental hygiene tools. She scrubbed the edge of the terrycloth over her teeth until they didn't feel fuzzy anymore. It was better than nothing.

So were the clothes Tom Riddle bought her. Sweatpants and a t-shirt declaring the mosquito was Minnesota's state bird weren't going to win any fashion prizes, but the sizes were right, and they smelled a bit like cheap candles. It was a step up from stale sweat.

When she opened the door of the bathroom, she could see the housekeeping staff had been by while she was hiding. The bed had been made, and a neat stack of fresh towels sat next to her purse. It was a bit surreal to be in a blizzard and still have laundry, but she wasn't going to complain.

Tom looked at her, and one lip curled. "You don't exactly clean up well," he said. "Why is it all the plain women go into psychology?"

"Probably for the same reason all the crazy men do," she said.

His smile twitched up one side of his mouth, and her reaction was maddening because she knew he was aware the effect that half-smirk had on people. On women. He'd just insulted her, and it didn't matter; she felt herself start to melt in response to that practiced charm.

She turned away and began digging through her purse for a pick. Humans respond to good-looking people. She knew this. It was a biological drive that assumed symmetry and youth meant health which meant good genes. The way his smile made her pulse race was 100% lizard brain biology. She'd read a paper about it as an undergraduate after she'd developed the worst crush on a Bulgarian football player. Intellectualizing things made them bearable.

"Well," Tom said. "We're stuck here."

"I see that."

"Once I am showered, we should get breakfast. Hunger benefits no one."

He pushed himself up, took all three of the newly delivered towels and a pile of clean clothes he must have purchased for himself, and stalked into the bathroom. A moment too late Hermione remembered she'd left her dirty clothes on the floor, including the underwear. She could hear the lock on the door turn and the water begin to run and, with a sigh, she sat on the edge of the bed and began flicking through channels. There had to be something better than public access.

There wasn't.

By the time he emerged, looking unfairly good in a t-shirt that claimed to list all of Minnesota's venomous snakes, she'd rejected a game show about the prices of canned goods, a soap opera in French, and what appeared to be competitive candlepin bowling. He'd been right, damn him. Public access was as good as it got, and the woman making a dry, logical argument for legalizing migrant workers and guaranteeing a fair minimum wage had some excellent graphs she was clicking through in her presentation.

"Is she still spewing that nonsense?" Tom asked. He tossed a towel on the floor. "She was on while you were passed out too."

"It's hardly nonsense," Hermione said. She could feel outrage pushing its way up from her gut, threatening to choke her. "These workers suffer from incredible exploitation and are -"

"Lucky to be here, and who cares?" Tom said. "Let's get breakfast before the power goes out and it's nothing but granola bars from the vending machine."

She opened her mouth to protest his utter callousness. She could cite figures. She could cite cases. She had facts and anecdotes, and she knew she was right, but the glint in his eyes made her stop. He wanted her to launch into a tirade. All these years of studying psychology and she recognized when a man was trying to push her buttons and, by god, she wasn't going to let him. She wasn't going to be his entertainment.

"Breakfast sounds good," she said. It did, too. It smelled better. They stepped out into the narrow hall, and she caught the unmistakable hint of bacon. She inhaled with satisfaction. "Lead on," she said. "Take me to the promised land."

He shut the door, checked the latch, and gestured which way she should go. "Did you know pigs are smarter than dogs?" he asked with what had to be malicious cheer as they walked. "They outperform toddlers, dogs, and chimps on cognition tests."

She ordered the oatmeal and fruit bowl. Tom smirked as he ordered the farmer's breakfast, "With extra bacon, please."

Hermione didn't say anything as she dug her spoon into the oatmeal. It was lumpy, no amount of brown sugar could hide the way it wanted to congeal, and the sliced bananas and chunks of grapefruit in the fruit bowl seem to eye one another warily. They knew they didn't belong together even if that bit of wisdom had passed the chef by. She could hear the crunch of the bacon as Tom broke a piece in half, and she forced a smile onto her face and finished the oatmeal as if it were the best breakfast she'd ever had, the one thing she really longed for. She'd been sick the night before. She'd been in the grip of a fever after walking in shoes that still felt cold and damp. It was reasonable and sensible to get a bland breakfast. It wasn't at all because Tom Riddle made her feel guilty about the damn pigs.

"So," he said, swallowing his bacon but not his sly smile. "We seem to be stuck here for the foreseeable future. Any suggestions on how to pass the time?"

"I was going to -," she began, about to talk about the reading she had on her phone, and the emails she could answer, and the texts. Oh, god. The voicemail. She had stopped even looking at the number because it depressed her so.

She fell silent at his smirk. "Planning to work, were you?" he asked.

The sentences she was putting together about responsibility and maturity and using this time fell apart when he added, "You really are the unbearable work-a-holic everyone claims, aren't you?"

"Everyone?" She hated the way that came out a pitch too high. She cleared her throat. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm hardly the subject of gossip -."

She stopped when he leaned back in his chair and took a sip from his coffee mug. It was yellow, and the sort of horrible yellow that wasn't sunny or rich or anything but murky and a mistake. She wondered what the proper name for that shade was as she stared at it. She didn't want to see the glint in his eyes.

"You are though," he said. "That Weasley kid? The one with the famous family and no money? He said, and I quote, _She's a horror. It's no wonder she doesn't have any friends_."

Hermione picked her spoon up and dug another mound out of her oatmeal. She'd thought Ronald liked her. They'd gone to the same undergraduate program, and she'd let him borrow her notes more times than she cared to remember. She'd been planning on asking whether he wanted to go to Professor Slughorn's annual Christmas dinner with her. She'd watched football with him, and she didn't even like football very much. Other than that Bulgarian team. She'd listened to Ronald's stories about his glory days in high school.

Tom Riddle wasn't done.

"That Malfoy boy?"

"The rich one with the hair?" she asked, though she knew full well who Draco Malfoy was. He'd been a shit to her since day one.

Tom sounded far too amused, and she realized her attempt to pretend she was only vaguely aware of who Malfoy was had been futile. The bastard was just as good at psychology as she was. "He's not your biggest fan," was all he said, however.

"Funny," Hermione said. "And here I thought he liked my hair."

"Mmm, no. And that Brown girl – what's her first name? Lilac?"

"Lavender."

"Right. She says you're an unimaginative bore."

"And she says you're from the poorhouse," Hermione said. She forced her words into the cruelest drawl she could. She'd been tormented in elementary and middle school, and she'd learned to turn her voice into a weapon she could stab into mean little girls. She looked up and met his eyes at last. "I mean, if we're sharing what our colleagues really think of us. She thinks you're a charity case the university let in so they could tout their scholarship numbers."

"Is that the best she can manage?" Tom asked. "I'm not generally hurt by the truth."

"Funny," Hermione said. "It's the only thing that hurts most people."

"It's only a problem if you respect the people saying it," he said. The mockery had dropped from his voice, and the half-amused twitch has disappeared from the corners of his mouth. "Lilac Brown is intellectually weak and has insipid interests."

"Lavender," Hermione said faintly. She'd never heard anyone voice the things she disliked about Lavender quite so succinctly. It was gratifying and horrible at the same time. You weren't supposed to say things like that. You weren't even supposed to think them.

Riddle wasn't done. "Malfoy is afraid he's nothing without his father, so he see-saws between seeking Daddy's approval and trying to assert he doesn't need it. It's fun to watch, but it doesn't make him someone I respect."

"And Ron?" Hermione asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Tom shrugged. "He'll be talking about his high school glory days until the dementia sets in, but he's a good enough sort if that's what you like."

It wasn't what she liked. It was, now that she thought about it, a terrible vision of the future, made worse because Tom didn't even lace it with malice. Made worse because it had the ring of truth.

"You," he said.

"Are a rule-bound, priggish, brown-nosing bore," she said before he could finish that sentence. It wasn't as if she hadn't heard it all before. She'd been the girl teachers put in charge when they had to leave the room. It hadn't done wonders for her popularity in school, and she'd known, in the way one knows unpleasant facts, that those teachers had still preferred the trouble-making boys. She could be the brightest and the hardest working and the most reliable, and she'd never have the lazy charm of a Ron Weasley. She'd never be able to flash a rueful grin that she'd been caught again and get out of any trouble with a dimple and a shrug. She tried not to think about it because it made her angry and resentful and bitter.

She bared her teeth in what tried to be a smile at Tom Riddle as he studied her across the breakfast table of this not-terrible-but-not-a vacation-resort-either-hotel. "Well, true," he said. "And plain, and you need a new hair stylist, but that wasn't what I was going to say."

"Oh?"

"You're smart enough," he said. "Not as smart as I am, of course, but -"

"Because you're a prodigy."

He shrugged. "I am," he said. He sounded almost impatient she'd pointed that out. Did brilliant men get tired of being reminded they were brilliant? She wouldn't. People could tell her she was one of a kind, the best in her generation, a bright mind in the darkness every hour of every day, and she'd never get tired of hearing it.

Tom was still talking. She braced herself for what was sure to be abuse. "You're better than anyone else in the department, better than half the professors already, and yet here you are in your dumpy shoes with your responsible, dreary research topics and your tiresome fear of failure, and I have to wonder… do you ever get bored of living in your box?"

She hadn't expected that. "A box?" she asked.

He shrugged. "You play by the rules, Granger," he said. "And it's not getting you anywhere but third-rate funding to go to a second-rate conference."

"And what would you recommend?" she asked. She could hear the tartness in her words. She had every one of her ducks in a row. She had charts for her ducks. Color-coded charts. She knew what she had to do to get tenure at a world-class university and that was precisely what she intended to do.

"I guess that depends on what you want," he said. "I mean, if all you want is tenure at Harvard, you're on your way. I'm sure you'll plod along with your mousy hair and practical shoes from your degree to a post-doc to a position, and no one will ever care, and you'll die as unnoticed as you've lived."

Something crept along Hermione's shoulders and settled down along the back of her neck. It felt cold and sure, and it reached roots into her mind and settled there with all the confidence of a plant that knows it has found fertile ground. "If all I want?" she asked faintly. She'd never heard tenure anywhere dismissed so cavalierly, much less tenure at a top school. That was a prize to reach for. It wasn't an 'if all you want.'

He met her eyes and smiled. "You heard me," he said.

"What do you plan to do, then," she asked. If he didn't want the thing the rest of them politicked and networked and groveled to get, what was he after? She knew it wasn't nothing. She knew he wasn't some wealthy dilettante and she was sure he wasn't the sort to pursue knowledge for its own sake.

The waitress set their check down on the table and Hermione picked it up and turned it over in her hands and she thought through why a person would study psychology if he didn't want to go into research. She was sure he didn't mean to go into private practice. He had to be self-aware enough to know a man who hated people wouldn't be good at that. Where else would a good sense of how people worked – of how to _manipulate_ them - be useful?

"If you were after money, you'd have picked business," she said slowly. She was picking her way through her ideas with care. "You don't want tenure."

"How clever are you?" he asked.

He'd been watching cable access television when she'd fallen asleep, nearly incoherent from the fever. He'd said something. She tried to remember.

"Power," she said.

"Give the girl a prize," he said. He wiped his hands on his napkin and tossed it on the table, signed his name and their room number to the check, and stood up. "Let's go watch some more of that scintillating local access and wait for the plows and tow trucks to arrive."

"So we can go to the second-rate conference," she said.

He smiled but didn't answer. Instead, he plucked two of the plastic bags from behind the counter, surely meant for take-out, and smiled at the tired waitress. She rolled her eyes and shrugged. No one cared if he took the bags.

"Why go?" Hermione demanded. She didn't care about the bags either. She cared about his smug dismissal of the reason they were stuck together. "Why go if it's so worthless."

He set a hand on her lower back and began to guide her toward the door of the little restaurant. "There's a woman," he said. _Wasn't there always_ , crossed her mind. Even this one with his charming smile and his cold ambitions was lured by a woman. Never her, of course. No one was ever lured by her.

"You're terribly transparent," he said. "You can't really believe I want to seduce Hepzibah Smith."

Hermione had no idea who that was, an ignorance that must have been as plain as her earlier assumptions. Tom chuckled. The hall seemed long, with its worn carpet and inoffensive pictures on the walls. He stopped at a small nook with an ice-maker and vending, and she watched, perplexed, as he pulled out his credit card and proceeded to buy every Snickers bar, every granola bar, every pack of sunflower seeds. He filled the bags he'd taken, leaving gum and chewy fruit candy but taking anything substantial.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Power might go out eventually," he said. "And even if it doesn't, that little café's going to run out of bacon and eggs if we're stuck here too long. I'm just laying in an emergency stash."

"You're hoarding resources," she said. She felt a bit aghast. People should share.

He didn't seem impressed by her tone or the implied accusation. "See how you feel on day five when you've got food," he said.

"If it comes to that."

"If it doesn't, we'll have plenty to snack on for the drive back."

She almost stomped back to their room. If the lights went out and stayed out she could always just set up a distribution center. She flicked a glance at Riddle. If she told him it would set him up with a good narrative for his political goals, he'd probably even be on board. Men were nothing if not predictable no matter how clever they were.

She sat through almost an hour of public access television in silent, fuming rage waiting for him to talk. Usually, people couldn't stand sitting in silence while she glared at them. They'd stammer out something eventually. Tom Riddle did not. He took the only chair, propped his feet up, ripped into a package of cookies, and ignored her to watch local politicians speak earnestly about things he couldn't possibly care about.

The plows did not arrive.

After thirty minutes, she marched down to the lobby, grabbed a copy of the local paper, and marched back. She read it, sliding her eyes over descriptions of the high school indoor track team's most recent meet, and an editorial about the importance of funding a project to reinforce the stability of a footbridge, and a column that seemed to offer weekly tips on basic home repairs. Apparently, flushing spoiled buttermilk down the toilet for good for septic tank maintenance. That was good to know. If she ever lived in a place without city sewage, she'd be sure to remember that.

"Who's Hepzibah Smith," she asked at last.

Tom glanced down at his watch. "Fifty-seven minutes," he said. "Not bad, though I thought you'd manage ninety at least."

"Are you ever pleasant to be around?"

Tom dragged his eyes over her in a way she knew was absolutely intended to be sexual and insulting. She didn't react, and when he finally returned his attention to her face, he was smiling. "Most women tell me they find my attentions very pleasant," he said. "At least in bed."

"Nice attempt at distraction," she said. "About Hepzibah."

"Point to you," he said. "Hepzibah Smith is an old woman, tends to go on about her family and how important they were."

"Were they?"

"How much do you fetishize the Founding Fathers?" he asked.

Hermione made a face. Misogynists, all of them, and racists to boot.

"Quite," he said. "But waving around relics of the past tends to impress a certain demographic, and her support would be invaluable in any run for statewide office, so I have tea with her and pretend to care about her great grandmother's locket and her meticulously organized genealogical records."

That was surprisingly honest, and Hermione searched his face, looking for the lie. She found nothing but the tiniest hint of bitterness. An orphan was probably the last person who'd put family history on a pedestal. He'd have to be a self-made man. He had no other choice.

"Sounds delightful," she said, injecting as much sarcasm into her voice as she could.

Tom Riddle laughed – he actually laughed – and it transformed his face from sly to warm. He'd make a brilliant politician, able to conjure sincerity like that. "It's tedious," he said, leaning a little bit toward her as though they were co-conspirators. His admission invited her to be part of a select group, the people he trusted. "She's not nearly as clever as she thinks she is and she over-sweetens her tea."

As a performance, it was nearly perfect. Every part of Hermione wanted to scoot a bit closer to him, to trust him, to read this slightly mean confession as a marker of emotional intimacy. Tom was so, so good. He must have ensnared dozens – no, scores – of people with this act that suggested people were all terrible except for them. "I'm sorry," she said. She looked away, out the window, to the falling snow. Let him think he was reeling her in. "Old ladies are the worst."

She could see his self-deprecating shrug out of the corner of her eye. "If one wants to win, Hermione, one can't always choose one's companions with an eye to enjoying their company."

She tried not to look at him pointedly. Of that, cooped up in this hotel room with him, she was well aware.

"But sometimes unwelcome companions turn out to be the best," Tom said. That was almost a purr, and she couldn't resist peeking at his expression. His eyes glittered. "I would never have wanted you," he said.

"Mutual."

"But you have hidden depths to you, Miss Granger."

Before she could respond to that, the lights flickered, and the television became blank. She sucked in her breath, and everything came back on. "That was close," she said.

He raised his brows, glanced at the light, and as if by magic, the darkness returned. This time it stayed.

The light from the window kept the room from being plunged into impenetrable ink, but the twilight haze wasn't encouraging. Snow continued to fall, the sky stayed resolutely grey, and no matter how long she stared into the parking lot, no plow appeared.

Tom Riddle pulled out his phone.

"You have data?" she asked.

"In spurts," he said. He scanned whatever he was looking at quickly and then grimaced as whatever connection to the outside world he'd had disappeared. He thumbed the phone off – better to conserve the battery she supposed – and looked at her with what seemed to be a delighted smile. "More snow," he said. "A second storm coming through, we're to shelter in place. Over a quarter of the state has lost power, crews are coming in from other areas, but it may be a while."

That was the worst news she had ever heard. The form rejection from the Yale program had been bad. She'd thrown herself onto her bed and wept when she'd read its generic lines about many qualified applicants and they couldn't take everyone and thank you so much for your interest. It had all meant no.

Somehow, the horror of that rejection paled in comparison to the realization she was going to be stuck here with Tom Riddle for days. Days and days and days. They were going to miss the conference. They were going to run low on food. They were going to be in the same bed. Again. And again. And again.

She looked back at the parking lot in desperation as if she could will rescuers to appear.

She could not.

Tom Riddle came up behind her, so close she could feel his breath on her skin. "Well," he said. "Whatever shall we do to pass the time?"

"We could read," she said as baldly as she could manage. He was making her pulse race, and he had to know it. She damned all the human instincts that responded to charm and beauty and intelligence and turned slowly to look at him. She let her eyes drop down to his ankles and work up his legs, over his waist, and along his torso.

"Read what?" he asked when her eyes reached his, and that made her grind her teeth. How dare he try to turn this back on her? How dare he! He knew perfectly well what he was implying.

"I wonder if the gift shop has any books," she said.

"I'll walk you down," he said. "Storms like this don't always bring out the best in people."

The only books they had were paperback romances of the most lurid sort. This one had a woman in a torn dress swooning in the arms of a man who, for some inexplicable reason, was nearly naked. That one had a woman in a black corset leaning back against a man who appeared to be about to bite her. "Convenient of her to have costumed herself appropriately for a vampire book," Tom said, picking that one up and turning it over so he could read the blurb on the back. "Imagine how embarrassing it would be to seduce your undead lover in old sweats and a t-shirt."

Hermione managed to keep from glancing down at the sweats she was wearing. The urge to mutter that he wasn't exactly undead danced at the tip of her tongue, but he wasn't her lover either, and she didn't want to imply he was. Or could be. "I'll take this one," she said, handing over the one with the literal ripped bodice.

"We can only take cash," the girl behind the counter said apologetically. Hermione nodded. With the power out, that made sense. She fished out her wallet and was reaching for a bill when Tom threw some money down on the counter.

"I think it's going to entertain both of us," he said. "It's just fair I chip in."

He turned to go, and the girl leaned forward and said in a whisper, "Page 211, trust me."

Hermione's face began to burn. She mumbled thanks, then turned and fled after Tom Riddle. He kept his hands shoved down into the pockets of his trousers as he sauntered along. "I look forward to discovering what literary treats are in store for us," he said. "Do you think our heroine knows what's in store for her?"

"Don't be a snob," Hermione snapped. She didn't even like romance novels, but she wasn't going to let him insult them. She bit her tongue, then added as slyly as she could, "Or are you a closet misogynist, Tom?"

"I beg your pardon?" he asked.

She shrugged, feigning nonchalance and grateful for the conference presentation on the psychology of genre fiction she'd sat through a few months earlier. "Some men are threatened by books that aren't written for or about them," she said. "Especially when they're the largest section of the marketplace."

He opened their door. "That," he said, "is what I meant by hidden depths, my dear."

She ignored that to drag a chair over to the window and read by what remained of the light. Tom Riddle produced a book of crossword puzzles out of some hidden pocket in his coat and sat on the bed, long legs outstretched, and she could hear his pen scratching against the paper with steady, unrelenting pressure. Hermione read about a terrible rake who turned out to have a heart of gold and a much younger sister who adored him, and Tom filled in clue after clue without any noticeable pause. She turned pages in her novel, and he flipped pages in his crossword puzzle book until at last it was too dark to see any longer and she folded down a corner and set the novel aside.

"Did the good guys win?" Tom asked, setting down his pen.

"It's not that sort of story," she said.

"Every story is that sort of story," he corrected her with an amused glint in his eyes she couldn't miss, even in the twilight room. "Do you win, or do you lose."

She decided she wasn't going to answer that. "Do you want to see if they are trying to serve food?" she asked.

He let the conversation be sidelined, and there was indeed a buffet of cold sandwiches and chips in the restaurant. The waitress apologized for not being able to follow the menu and began a spiel that stuck Hermione as wholly unnecessary. Of course, they weren't serving cooked food. The power was out.

Tom set a hand on her arm and turned his charm on. "You're a wonder for getting this out for us," he said. "I hope they appreciate you."

The girl blushed, and stammered, and scooted away to the kitchen fast enough she didn't see the kind generosity in Tom's eyes turn to amusement. "Watch and learn," he said.

"You think she's beneath you," Hermione said. She picked up a sandwich of bologna on white bread, grabbed a mustard pack and a bag of chips, and found a table. She took a bite before Tom spoke. He had a knack for waiting until her mouth was full.

"You're a nice middle-class girl, aren't you," he said.

She nodded around her mouthful of meat and cheese. Her parents had both been dentists, and her childhood a steady progression through all the checklists of trips to Disney and ballet recitals and travel abroad to countries where not speaking the language wasn't a barrier to tourism. Her mother had sat her down at seventeen and told her they'd pay for the best college she could get into, and laughed a little when she added, _But we aren't rich, Hermione, so maybe don't apply to Harvard._

"That's what I thought," he said, tipping his head toward the kitchen. "So that girl, you don't know her. Grew up in a small town. Bet only 40% of her high school even tries to go to college, if that many, and most drop out. Too hard. Too expensive. They aren't prepared."

Hermione took another bite. She had no idea where he was going with this.

"But I knew her," he said. "Or I knew enough girls like her to spot the type. She's pretty now. She'll be faded by 30. Missing a tooth, maybe two, by 40. What you take for granted has never been an option for her."

"Get to your point."

"You're the one who thinks she's beneath you," he said. "Because you've never known anyone like her and, since we both know you're never going to leave your safe little world of academia, you never will. You just aren't willing to be honest about how you really feel about the masses. I am."

"You are such an asshole," she said.

He shrugged and stood up. "Point granted," he said. "But I'm still right."

"I do not think she's… you know what. Fuck you."

"I'll be in the room," he said.

Hermione ate the rest of her sandwich in furious silence. He had no right to imply she didn't know how the other half lived. Maybe she hadn't pulled herself by her bootstraps out of some godforsaken orphanage, but that didn't mean she was unaware of the lower classes struggled. She'd marched in campus protests to improve the working conditions for the housekeeping staff as an undergraduate. She'd led a sit-in outside the main cafeteria for three days straight. Tom Riddle had no idea who she was or what she could do.

She strode back to the room, taking care not to be too loud so she wouldn't bother anyone, thinking about her posture, looking down at her feet. She needed to get new shoes. She'd ruined these in the snow, and people judged you by your shoes. And by your bag. She should get a good bag. She'd ask her grandmother for suggestions. Something classy that didn't say, 'graduate student.'

Tom was sprawled out on the bed, his own shoes kicked off, which was fine, and his shirt off, which was less fine. She could see it hanging, wet. It didn't take much to figure out he'd washed it, but he could have put one of the t-shirts from the gift shop on instead. He didn't need to lounge around showing off how much time he spent at the gym.

"My eyes are up here," he said, sounding terribly, cruelly amused. Hermione didn't jerk her eyes back to his face, though. Didn't let him see how uncomfortable she felt that he'd caught her ogling him. If he was going to sit around half-naked in a room they were stuck sharing, he shouldn't be surprised she looked at his stomach, or at the sweat pants hitched low across his hips. She made a point of obviously dropping her gaze from his navel to his crotch and holding it there for several long seconds before meeting his eyes.

"Sorry," she said, not meaning it at all.

"I'm bored," he said, and she knew it was an invitation.

Hermione supposed it had been inevitable. There was a reason people had babies nine months after a power outage. Even with television to entertain them, there was only so much she could watch. Only so many pages of a romance novel she could read. She waited to feel outraged or offended. What she felt instead was curiosity. She toed off first one ruined shoe, then the other, and kicked them across the room.

"Me too," she said.

"You on the pill?" he asked. That surprised her. In her experience, men just assumed she'd taken care of that.

"I don't like kids," she said by way of an answer. She especially didn't like surprise pregnancies that got in the way of her plans. Especially the new ideas that were just beginning to take shape in her mind. Abortion might be legal but people still judged and for what she wanted to do, she'd have to be above reproach.

Fucking a fellow graduate student wasn't enough of a skeleton in her closet to put off any but the most conservative voters, and, if push came to shove, she could always imply she'd been coerced. _I don't want to talk about it_ , she could say, and hold back the hint a sob that she carefully didn't repress quite well enough. _That was the weekend I decided to spend my life trying to do some good in the world. Things change you, you know, and it's up to you to decide if you're going to be changed for the better or the worse._

Oh, she quite liked that. She should make sure to write it down later in case she needed it.

Tom Riddle lay back on the bed – on their bed – and laced his fingers behind his head. "Have to admit I'm a bit surprised," he said. "Good girl like you. Isn't this a little outside your box of appropriate things? Was fucking me on one of your to-do lists?"

She shrugged and pulled her shirt off and tossed it to the back of the chair. A slight posture adjustment as she reached her hands up to undo her hair did wonderful things to her breasts, and she hid her smile at the way Tom inhaled at that. When she let her hair tumble down, he said, "Very nice."

"I'm going to take advantage of the hot water while we still have it," Hermione said. "Join me?"

She didn't wait for an answer. Just shimmied out of her sweatpants – not, she had to admit, the sexiest thing she'd ever removed, but the ass under them made up for the frumpy wrapping, and she tossed the pants on the same chair as her shirt, and sashayed off to the bathroom and began to run the water.

She could hear him get up.

Men were so easy. She'd done an entire research project on male response to sexual lures as an undergrad. It had been well received, but she'd never quite believed her own results. Surely no one could be so stupid as to forget dislike and rivalry because of young ass and a pair of breasts, no matter how firm and perky they were.

Tom came up behind her and cupped his hands around those breasts. "You are a remarkable woman," he breathed in her ear. He'd shucked his own clothes between the bed and here, and she could feel the length of him pressing against her.

"So I've been told," she said. She put her hand under the water to check the temperature. Warm enough, but not too hot. As soon as the stored water ran it, it would be nothing but cold. Ugh. She hoped the power came back on soon. Or the plows arrived.

A step into the bath and that still hot water was running down her skin. She reached over and picked up a bar of hotel soap. It smelled like cheap perfume and antiseptic, but smell wasn't the sense she planned to indulge. She rubbed it between her hands, and casually began to spread the lather on her stomach.

"Let me," Tom said, and then he was in the shower with her, his enviable stomach under her hands, his tongue in her mouth. He was good at this. Almost terrifyingly skilled. He cupped one hand behind her head as he reached another down between her legs, and, without meaning to, she was moaning against him.

He'd been with a lot of women to be this good. The doors hard work and talent wouldn't unlock sometimes might yield to charm and sex and, if the person was foolish, the belief love entered into this.

Hermione Granger was a lot of things, but she wasn't foolish. "Your turn," she said, twisting her body away from him. He wasn't the manipulator here, he was the manipulated, and it was time for her to exert a little power over him. She dropped her to knees and took the length of him in her mouth. She bet women liked to tell him he was substantial. Larger than normal. She wondered if he was naïve enough to believe it. The water was running down her face, and he had his hands in her hair holding on tightly, and his grip was a feedback loop. Run her tongue here and his fists clenched. Flick it over there, and he relaxed. Not that spot. Not for him. But he liked this. Not just the feel of her mouth on him. He savored the image of her on her knees.

Her field had taught her a lot. She'd learned about placebos, and stimuli, and conditioned responses. And she'd learned how to read people. She'd never really thought to apply it in quite this way before, but when he had his cock in her mouth, Tom Riddle wasn't the prodigy with the perfect accent and the intimidating sneer. He wasn't the smug bastard who liked to keep her off balance. He was just a man, like every other man.

There was a lesson there.

She laughed with delight when they stumbled, not even bothering to grab towels, from the shower to their bed. She wasn't even surprised when Tom pinned her wrists above her head. Of course, he did. He was so, utterly predictable.

She smiled to herself as he lowered his mouth to a nipple, then arched her back up and gasped at the flick of his tongue. This wasn't the sort of thing good girl Hermione did. This wasn't the way a dreary, plain girl with sensible shoes who worked hard and did all the right things behaved. Time to get out of her neat little box. Time to fly.

Time to win.


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione looked out over the convention hall. Red, white and blue signs were everywhere. She'd won. She knew she'd won. Oh, they were still waiting for all the results to come in, and her opponent had done well in certain, very conservative demographics. But she'd won. Her opponent had gambled. Risked it all to court the elite with their money and their snobbery while she'd gone after the working classes he'd told her she'd never understand.

She supposed you could take the boy out of the orphanage, but the orphan never stopped wanting to fit in with all those rich people.

Predictable.

"Ma'am?" One of her aides came forward and touched her arm. "Riddle's on the line. He's calling to concede."

Hermione took the phone her aide handed her and tried not to smile quite that smugly. "Tom," she nearly cooed. "How lovely to hear from you."

. . . . . . . . . .

 ** _A/N - Many thanks to the alpha readers who've taken a stab at this over its seven-month gestation. SM,_** **tamrapraxidike** ** _,_** **olivieblake** ** _, you are all the best._**


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